[Note 263.1] The native home referred to in the song is probably Ireland. Many Irish men came to Scotland by way of the steamer services from Belfast to Greenock.

[Note 263.2] By 1841 a railway station at Bishopton had opened and many Irish navvies who had come to Scotland to work on the Glasgow to Ayr line decide to stay in the area .

Reference: http://wikimapia.org/2362731/Bishopton

[Note 263.3] Navvies were much fitter and stronger than the generality of men. That together with any tools of the trade that the hero might have been carrying would have marked him out as a navvy. Additionally the ganger may have known him from previous contracts.

[Note 263.4] The 1851 census in Knaresborough coincided with railway construction in the area. It records a that farm labourer's cottage occupied by couple and their 4 children, was also home to 19 navvies and their dependants including 4 married couples and three children. It was common for 4 or 5 people to share the typical 10 foot square bedroom. Some families tried to make arrangements for men to sleep in one cottage and women in another but this was not always possible.

Reference: Hylton, Stuart. The Grand Experiment : The Birth of the Railway Age 1820-1845 (Hersham, Ian Allen, 2007)

[Note 263.5] Declining employment in the countryside and overcrowded cottages forced young women to leave home in order to seek work. A well-paid navvy dressed his Sunday best silk neckerchief, fancy waistcoat and moleskin breeches might seem an attractive proposition. In the words of one congregational minister quoted by the railway historian Frederick Williams

"The navvies, bare-throated, their massive torsos covered but by the shirt, their strong lissom loins lightly girt, and their massive muscles showing out on their shapely legs through the tight, breeches, are the perfection of animal vigour. Finer men I never saw, and never hope to see" [i]

Domestic service was by far the largest employer of women throughout the 19th century. To escape a life of poorly paid drudgery a young women might well accept the risk of going on the tramp with a navvy.

[i] Williams, F. S. Our iron Roads (London, Ingram Cooke & Co, 1852)

[Note 263.6] In fact navvies were very well paid. They could often earn twice as much as agricultural labourers. In 1845 harvesters earned 22 pence per day; navvies earned 45 pence for a 9 hour day

Reference: Cowley, Ultan. The Men Who Built Britain: A History of the Irish Navvy (Wolfhound, Dublin, 2001)

[Note 263.7] The last two verses on the song are variants on common tropes